Lincoln to focus on volume models, not halo car

There's profits in numbers.

That's going to be the approach to new vehicles at Lincoln, Automotive News says. Lincoln will focus on high-volume vehicles instead of low-selling flagships and halo vehicles. That means a steady diet of alphabet soup loaded with MKZ's, MKX's and MKS's for dealers and no more fancy flagships or other vehicles that don't meet the volume metric. We'd rule out high-performance sport cars as well, but Lincoln, by definition, rules that out.

Those big-ticket vehicles costs hundreds of millions of dollars to develop, and, while they may bolster a brand's reputation, they wouldn't help Lincoln's bottom line. So the next big Lincoln to arrive will be a compact car known as the MKC. Then we'll see redos of the MKX, MKT, MKS and Navigator.

Dumping high-level aspirations may reek of desperation, but for Lincoln, these are desperate times. Sales for the brand were down 11 percent in July and two percent for the year, according to Autodata Corp. The brand currently lacks prestige, style or even an unique platform.

In July, Lincoln sold 6,975 units, making it a distant last place out of mainstream luxury brands. Inifiniti had the next lowest total, selling 11,619 units.